


don't cry when shoved

by lady_peony



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Angst, Drifting Apart, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 08:05:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6746059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/pseuds/lady_peony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Isn't it rude to keep a guest waiting? Shinra?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't cry when shoved

The lady behind the glass waves him through, yawning and slaps a hand once on the radio until it stops fizzing, bursts into a clearer strain of jazz. Her oversized purple sunglasses are rhinestone-edged, an incongruous image with her tanned, wrinkled face. 

"Thank you," he says, takes a moment to adjust his backpack straps before skipping through the entrance to the elevators. 

The tiles under his feet are slick, newly-washed. Breathing almost, with condensation. The air conditioning inside the hall doesn't help much. 

The heat is a hovering, damp presence in the elevator, sinking into skin even with the precaution of a short-sleeved shirt. The door grumbles for a bit, creaking, then chimes open.

He steps off, walks on while checking the numbered plates on the walls on his right, his left. This one, wasn't it?

His hand rises, presses the doorbell. Once. It echoes in a low tone. The rest of the apartment building is silent in this weather, excluding the occasional shuffling or quiet murmurs. The rest of the city is muffled behind these walls, shrieks of cars and crowds hazy like tea kettle steam.

"Hey!" He raises his voice a degree louder, presses again on the doorbell. "Isn't it rude to keep a guest waiting? Shinra?"

A skidding of footsteps and a thump that makes the sound of something being knocked over. A shuffling of metal and the door creaks open, draws back wider.

"Orihara-kun!" Shinra smiles. "You're early. And you," he drops his eyes to the schoolbag at Izaya's side, "brought your homework?"

"You thought I lied?"

"It's you. I thought it wasn't just summer homework you wanted to finish!" Shinra spins away from the door. "Come in!"

He steps through, kicks his shoes off at the foyer and rearranges them. It does not take long for them both to settle by the wide table in the center of the living room, books sprouting on the floor and threateningly stacked near glasses of cool tea.

Between the two of them, most of their subjects are finished quickly. Shinra gets into a minor mix-up with some dates on a history assignment. Izaya starts rewriting over math problems with errors and penciling in nonsense words in a poetry book. It could work as a new code. The question: would it be more expedient with puns or with numbers?

A furin bell rings softly, somewhere behind Izaya's left side. 

"Hey, Orihara-kun?"

"What?"

"Should we go to the convenience store? Oh, or the arcade?"

"Depends," Izaya says. He flicks a finger idly at his empty glass. A droplet of tea slides from the rim down to the bottom of the glass. "What for?"

Shinra sits up from where he had been flopped over on the couch. Drops two pens onto the table over an open notebook. "I wanted to write new things in my summer diary of course."

Izaya lets out a laugh. "We haven't been assigned a summer diary since the fifth grade."

"Oh, that," Shinra dismisses. "No, no, it's not for a teacher. It's a diary for my dearest person to read. So we can trade journals." 

Oh. That would be why Shinra had invited him.

"We're going out." Izaya stands, runs his hand along his pocket to check if his wallet is inside. It is. "The convenience store. You should pay your experimental subjects properly, you know."

"Day Thirteen of Shinra's Summer: A friend finished summer homework with me today. He asked for my help and I was friendly! We are both excellent, very hard-working students." Shinra finishes narrating aloud, twists his wrist with a flourish to press a period into the page. 

 

_

 

This too, was new. Shinra opens the door after the first ring.

Izaya extends his hand with the bag. "This is yours." 

"Orihara-kun! Come inside!" Shinra draws back from the door, Izaya's present in his hand now, and Izaya closes the door as he steps in.

The interior hasn't changed much to Izaya's eyes. Izaya drops his small duffel bag by the front door, pulls out a chair at the table for himself.

A snapping sound and a spiral of smoke drifts up from the table by the kitchen. The table is large enough to sit six maybe even ten people comfortably. Not much sound from the rest of the apartment and from the plates set, Shinra is not expecting a bigger number of others.

"Your family, Shinra?" Izaya tosses out, as Shinra is adjusting a cheerful red party hat on his own head. The candles on the cake flare higher, throwing orange flickers on Shinra's glasses.

Shinra picks up on the question without further prompting. "Father has some business and Celty will be back late. Maybe she's fetching a big birthday surprise for me!" Izaya can practically see Shinra's mind kick off into the land of unrealistic expectations.

"And your other friends?" Izaya says. Wonders if Shinra will look any angrier at that. 

Shinra picks up the cake knife, shrugs. "You are one. Aren't you?" He isn't angry and hasn't stopped smiling, although his grin takes on a more contemplative cast. "All you really need for a party is just more than one person. You should wear your party hat too, Orihara-kun."

Izaya looks at the thing, neon orange and glittering. He puts it on. "Happy Birthday to Shinra," he says. 

There's a small accident when Shinra's sleeve catches fire from one of the candles and a burnt scent lingers for another hour or so. It doesn't take too long for the strawberry cake to be split up. 

Shinra opens his gift in a rustle of paper, quick neat slices across its corners with the cake knife. Thanks Izaya with the appropriate words and intonations and gratitude for the present. They flip through the TV for the rest of the night, Izaya sneaking glances at his phone during the commercials. No trouble so far today.

Their idle chatter rises a little when Shinra changes the channel from an old Doraemon rerun to an animal documentary. Neither of them shove the other over the remote; they're both too civil for that.

A hissing sound as an unseen neighbor switches on a stove from the other side of the wall. Two tiger cubs gambol in snow, viscera spilled and strewn across the field beneath them, red and pink, drying copper. On-screen, dull light glints off the eyes of a deer. An ear twitches as if from reflex, though its chest is still.

 

_

 

Izaya knows how to swear in three different languages. He has had little occasion to use them so far. 

"Shinra." 

"Hang on, it's just--let me push this button. Five minutes until we get there." 

"Really? Five minutes?" Nothing else but flat impatience. Noteworthy, as it so rarely is around Shinra. Their friendship, Izaya thinks, is still an ongoing experiment. The data has not been unsatisfactory; a normal state of affairs. Shinra hasn't failed him yet by being boring. 

He can't see Shinra's face though they are standing just five feet apart, just glimpses the vaguely trapezoidal shape of his head. Though if Izaya could see him, he would likely punch it if he had a free hand. 

"I couldn't ask anyone else!" Shinra chirps. "Father is out, Shizuo is visiting his brother, and I needed this done today!" The elevator beneath their feet hiccups, gears moving sluggishly. The floor beneath them strains its wires, hesitates three heartbeats before gliding up and up and up. "Anyways," Shinra says, "Some of this was your fault. You ruined the last one."

"I should tie you to this and drop it in the ocean." Izaya shakes his head, making his disappointment clear. "So picky about a little blood."

"A doctor," Shinra says, "needs a sanitary environment to work."

"Liar. You only dress like one."

"Doctor in-training," Shinra says, in that earnest uncomplicated tone he always has. Facts are always facts, simply because he is the one stating them. 

"A hundred and twelve pounds." Izaya is not complaining. Definitely not even near to grumbling. "Online delivery is a wonderful invention, isn't it?" 

"Well, well." Shinra laughs, without any regret. "I had to try it first. It is comfortable! That's important for keeping a happy roommate happy! And five blocks isn't that far to walk from the store. Oh, wait, wait, wait!" The elevator dings, doors closing, and Shinra stabs again at the panel. "We missed my floor!"

It takes another ten minutes for the elevator to inch back to the correct floor. Three minutes for Shinra to figure out how to maneuver both of them out. Almost twenty minutes struggling down the hall. Two minutes for Shinra to backtrack, thinking he drops his keys, finds them up one of his sleeves. Another five minutes spent squeezing the couch through the narrow front door.

"Done. Happy?" Izaya says. His hands stink with furniture polish. Good thing he hadn't worn his jacket today, even if he misses the familiar drape of it over his shoulders. He had a reputation and silhouette to maintain; information brokers could not afford total anonymity if they wanted clients.

"Yes, it's perfect!" Shinra says. "Thanks for carrying the couch with me!"

"All right." Izaya stretches. He looks down and Shinra has already flung himself onto the couch, humming no recognizable tune in particular. 

"Bye then," Shinra says, without turning to look at Izaya.

Izaya shuts the front door behind him; its hinges move smooth and silent. Shinra never did learn how to be a very good host. So it goes. He has no need to stay here longer if he wasn't asked. 

Without looking, his hand pulls out one of his three phones, waits for the screen to load. If there was nothing else here, at least he could use the rest of the afternoon to collect payments he was owed.

"Orihara-kun! You didn't leave yet!" Shinra peeks from behind the front door, his hand waving frantically.

"Yeah?" Izaya's fingers flip down the phone cover.

"The white armchair! We need to go downstairs and get it!"

"What's that, Shinra? Can't hear you, taking a very important call," Izaya says and sprints down the hall looking for the nearest open window.

 

-

 

 _Moved into a new place~_

_Do you want to visit?_

_?_

_?_

_//Send message?//_

_//Message deleted at 1:10am//_

He spins around once, twice on his chair. Tucks the phone into his pocket. Turns instead towards two other screens, logging in with easy taps of his fingers.

In this city, at any given time, he can observe almost three hundred thousand people, talking and screaming and dying and laughing. Breaking down. 

How _marvelous_.

What is one other person? A thousand to one or one in a thousand; it doesn't matter. Not a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> Best friend forgets to invite Local Area Man to party. Local Area Man offended for the rest of his life.  
> (aka this fic or izaya never goes to shinra's place unless shinra invites him or izaya is bleeding)
> 
> kind of tragic, honestly.


End file.
